[mtdewcmu]

It also sounds like you probably have some degree of anxiety that was being amplified by the drug. Most of the time it's probably beneath conscious awareness or latent. I imagine that when you're always disorganized and getting in trouble for things outside of your control as a kid, it sets you up to develop an anxiety disorder.

[tindrlabs]

Maybe - I'm not going to self-diagnose myself as a calm individual. But this kind of anxiety was more like stage fear then some continual anxiety. Hands tingling, stomach upset, nervous. In the 8 years since I stepped away from the drug option, I've never again felt that sort of reaction.

[mtdewcmu]

It can be hard to untangle what caused what. My feeling after many years is basically that emotions are emotions and drugs are drugs: if you feel anxious, that's an emotion. The drug may have been involved in setting the anxiety off, but anxiety is still an emotion and not a drug effect. Not everyone is going to become anxious from any given drug, because different people have different sensitivities to the sort of stimuli that may trigger anxiety. A true drug effect will not feel like an emotion.

It can be useful to pay attention to when a drug is triggering anxiety; just in case you go on to try other meds in the future.